For many years I have been promoting UDEF as an enabler for semantic interoperability. The problem with being an early adopter of UDEF where the benefit is semantic interoperability is that multiple systems need to adopt UDEF before you can begin to realize the benefits. The semantic interoperability benefit is realized by leveraging the UDEF ID that is language and application independent.

Within the last seven or eight months, I realized that UDEF provides an immediate benefit – specifically, when you follow the six basic steps of mapping your data to the UDEF, you improve the clarity of the name associated with the data. The UDEF name adds substantial clarity when compared to the typically cryptic names assigned to fields within an application. The garbage-in, garbage-out problem is likely heavily affected by poor names assigned to the fields. UDEF is a means for correcting the poor names issue which gives the early adopters of UDEF an immediate benefit while enabling the system for interoperability.

Ron Schuldt is a Senior Partner of UDEF-IT, LLC. He has more twenty years experience with national and international data standards covering the gamut from Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) to the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM). He is Chairman of The Open Group UDEF Project.